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I’ve always liked Weird Al Yankovic. His parodies make me laugh and he’s covered some of my favorite songs (I knew all the words to “Eat It” long before I even heard “Beat It”), but this one definitely takes the cake in my opinion. As a self-professed word nerd, his latest song “Word Crimes” hits close to home. In the day and age of texting and social media, good grammar seems to have gone out the window. Many of my friends and family sometimes think I may take my grammar a bit too seriously (I do type out all of my texts completely, never leaving even an apostrophe out) but after seeing “Word Crimes” it relieves me to know that at least Weird Al is on my side.

There are so many aspects of this video with which I agree wholeheartedly. The “literally” conundrum, the “less vs. fewer” confusion, and the issue with “I could care less” just to name a few. And the fact that the whole video is set to the tune of “Blurred Lines,” even adding in some aspects of Robin Thicke’s infamous video like the obnoxious hashtags (no half-naked women, sorry guys) is clever, even though I’m sick of that song.

Something else I love about this video (although Weird Al does this with a lot of his songs) is that it can relate to several different audiences. Obviously “Word Crimes” will appeal to all the grammar nerds of the world, and the “Blurred Lines” tune will reach younger demographics who are fans of the song. But I think it’s the little things that count, like the Reddit reference and the Doge Twitter account (anyone else notice the -2 favorites?) that the younger viewers will understand. Then there’s also the throwback references to Clippy, the Microsoft Office paperclip assistant and Prince/Formerly Known As Prince’s name change to a symbol, which will probably make other viewers smile.

The optimist in me is hoping that maybe now that Weird Al is trying to make correct grammar mainstream I will see less fewer mistakes from the grammar offenders. But either way, this video make me chuckle. Literally!